Heartbroke Bay

by Lynn D'urso

  “I’ll bring more wood,” she says, pulling on gloves and wrapping a scarf about her neck. Severts stands, offering to help.

  At the woodpile Michael uses the ax to break a frozen bolt of wood free from the stack. The winter sun is so low and weak it is possible to stare directly into it without being blinded, and the demarcation between sea and sky is blurred by blowing snow. Michael holds out his arms for Hannah to stack firewood in the crook of his elbows and says in a low voice, “I have to be with you.”

  Hannah bends to the wood, avoiding Michael’s eyes, and kicks at a frozen stick of kindling. “I cannot, Michael. We never should have started.” It has been more than a week since their last shivering assignation.

  “I love you, Hannah. I want you to go with me when this is over.”

  Hannah feels the welling burn of a tear start at the corner of one eye; he is so earnest, and his plea cuts at her heart. The vista of a pale and loveless lifetime with Hans stretches out before her, but deserting him is impossible; she cannot imagine returning to England bearing the stain of divorce.

  “No, Michael. It would never work. My father and mother … They would never forgive me.”

  Michael’s mouth twists, and his face crumples. He sags as if struck with a club, and for a moment Hannah fears he will cry. But then he straightens, clenching his jaw.

  “I see how it is,” he says, a vein pulsing at his temple. His lips pull tight, and he slams a booted foot into the woodpile, tumbling the rick to the ground, turning everything he feels into anger, as men do when the need arises to protect themselves from hurt.

  When he speaks again, his voice is as sharp as a splinter of glass.

  “Too fucking—fookin’—good for the likes of me, are you?”

  Michael’s anger strikes Hannah like a fist to her solar plexus. She hunches, bends at the waist, the breath driven from her body, and her hand springs to her mouth. She wants to take him by the hand, to tell him how wrong this is, to say that she has given him all that she can but that she cannot forsake who she is so easily, or how she fears the inevitable retribution adultery must bring, but he storms away, kicking at the ground like a small boy.

  Shocked by the strength of Michael’s anger, Hannah remains at the woodpile, stunned beyond any awareness of passing time, shivering at the burn of tears freezing on her cheeks until awakened by the pain of frost eating its way into her toes. Straightening her shoulders, she rubs at her nose and eyes with one mittened hand before gathering an armload of kindling and returning to the cabin. Once inside, she is careful to hide her red, swollen eyes, and busies herself with a simmering pot and spoon.

  That night the miners lie hunched under blankets and rags in the dark, listening to the screaming invective of the wind. The odors of the hut—wet wool, smoke, and the fishy smell of seal—cloy in Hannah’s nostrils, and she smells the reek of guilt on her own unwashed body. The lantern is out, and the shadows in the uttermost corners of the cabin are made darker by the dim orange stove light that flickers and dances across the floor.

  Their stomachs rumble with yearning. There is no spare lamp oil to burn, but Hannah can tell by the hard, uneven pace of breathing around her that no one is sleeping; the air is thick with resentment from all sides. She can feel the dark boil of Harky’s brooding in the Texan’s stillness beneath his blankets. Dutch tosses and turns, as he tries to swallow the reduction in his share of the gold. Severts lies on his back, arms behind his head, and when a flicker of firelight sweeps across his face, she sees him staring.

  Late November 1898

  The men are greatly vexed by the strain of living in such close quarters. There is little sense of unity among us in these difficult conditions. I fear my own presence and actions have contributed greatly to the resentments among our party. Mr. Severts avoids small talk and spends as little time in the cabin as possible, often leaving to hunt at first light when weather allows. Harky speaks not at all since Hans’s unjust accusations, and his sullen presence seems somehow threatening. Even good-hearted Dutch is difficult. He pouts and eats with his hands!

  Our circumstance becomes a valuable lesson in the qualities of civilization. It is the small courtesies that hold us together, and without which I fear the larger framework of civility may disappear entirely. I will speak with Hans regarding a rapprochement with the others at the first opportunity, though in the current mood, it is clear that any attempt to do so would be resented. At present, all I can do to advance our condition is to keep everyone’s clothing in repair and continue to do what I can to bring food to the table.

  The sun rises late; its light does nothing to dispel the cold. Harky and Dutch linger at splitting firewood. With each blow of the ax, the steam of Harky’s breath gouts from the tunnel of his sealskin hood, floating like dragon smoke about his bearded face. The woodchoppers talk in low tones, amid much shaking of heads, and, it seems to Hannah, they fall silent when she comes for an armload of wood.

  Inside the cabin, Hans watches as Michael reassembles his gun after taking the extraordinary step of boiling the metal parts in a kettle of water to remove the lubricating oils. Yesterday, the temperature plummeted so low that the grease on the mechanism congealed, the firing pin failed, and he missed a rare shot at a deer.

  The fine, hard snow that precedes a blizzard is beginning to hiss from the sky as Michael gathers his tack for the day’s hunting. When he says, “Maybe that deer is still out there. Venison would make a nice change from eternal seal meat, now wouldn’t it?” the forced and hearty tone of his words surprises the Nelsons, and Hannah’s voice stumbles as she hurries to agree. “Yes, it would, Mr. Severts.” Cold air floods through the open door, swirling about Hannah’s feet and sniffing at her skirts as Severts leaves, saying, “Ta. I’ll be back around dark.”

  Hannah uses the rare moment of privacy in the cabin to relieve herself, and when she steps outside to deliver the contents of the chamber pot to a snowdrift in back of the cabin, she is surprised to see Michael still present, deep in conversation with Harky and Dutch. At the sound of the door, the three men look up and cease talking. There is a line in their postures, a stiff, conspiratorial tilt of their heads, that makes Hannah think the conversation was not meant for her ears, and she acts as if she does not see them.

  Michael lifts the shotgun in a good-bye gesture, then slogs away, lowering his face into the tuck of his shoulder to escape the stinging wind. Hannah watches carefully as he burrows into the blizzard, becoming first a silhouette, then a cipher, before disappearing into the gloom. All sign of Michael Severts’s passage through the world evaporates completely, except for a line of tracks that blur quickly in the drifting snow.

  By noon the blow has grown to a delirious blizzard, full of barbarous fury, and the snow no longer falls, but screams headlong and sideways across the ground.

  At two o’clock, the cabin is hip-deep in drifting snow and beginning to leak at the seams. Pellets of ice filter in through the tiniest cracks between the logs.

  When three o’clock comes, the soft, shadowless gray light of the storm begins to fade and day ends. Inside the cabin, the breath of the miners is measured out in puffs of vapor. As the temperature creeps lower, they don mittens and hoods.

  “Wherever do you suppose Mr. Severts is?” asks Hannah, as darkness closes in.

  Hans shrugs. Harky toys with a spoon. “Maybe got turned around. Lost his way.”

  “Will he survive?” asks Hannah, alarmed.

  “If he knows enough to let the snow cover him,” says Dutch. “It’s warmer under the snow than out fighting the wind.”

  “Idiot,” mutters Hans, his voice muffled by a scarf across his mouth. “Where the hell do you get your ideas?”

  Over the course of the evening, the ferocity of the tempest wears thin, and the demented screams of the wind diminish to uninspired howls, then fall to an uneasy mumble. The hurried sibilance of blowing snow gives way to a hush effaced only by the feeble crackling of the stove. Dutch feeds another splin
ter of wood to the flames. Hannah listens carefully for the crunch of Michael’s boots.

  As she cooks and serves up a broth made from unsalted bones to give motion to the waiting, her cheeks and fingers sting with frost. After taking her place beside Hans at the table, she closes her eyes, tries to cup the bowl in her hands for the heat, but puts it down as too warm, then prays in silent appeal for God to preserve the warmth and life in her lover’s body. The prayer is answered by the squeak of footsteps approaching on snow grown hard in the cold.

  When Michael steps through the door, his eyebrows and beard are rimed with frost that sparkles yellow and gold in the firelight. His clothing is stiff with ice, and his motions are awkward as he raises the shotgun to port-arms and eyes the steaming kettle.

  “Mr. Severts,” says Hannah, relief in her voice. “We’ve been so worried. Thank God you’ve returned.”

  Michael does not reply as he shifts the shotgun to his left hand and uses his teeth to remove the mitten from his right. The open door behind him breathes a flow of stinging cold air into the room, and the steel of the shotgun shines blue black as he raises the weapon, leveling the barrel at the diners.

  “Wha … ?” says Dutch as the muzzle wavers from him, to Harky, then sways toward Hans. His voice climbs as he begins to rise to his feet. “Michael?”

  The twin staring eyes of the double-barreled shotgun shift from Hans and center on Dutch’s chest. Dutch’s chair overturns as he pushes back from the table, stands upright, and cries, “Michael, don’t!”

  Severts hesitates, the stock of the gun pulled firm against his shoulder.

  “Don’t!” repeats Dutch, at a loss for all words except the fervent expression of denial. “Don’t!”

  Dutch’s face screws up as he sees Michael’s finger tighten on the trigger. Turning his head to the side, he holds up one hand, palm out, as if death were something to be warded off like a splash of water or sand being flung by a bully.

  The rip and blast of the shotgun at close quarters lifts Dutch off his feet and flings him backward from the table. Hannah freezes, vaguely aware that Harky is already rising to his feet and in motion, not away from the gunman in flight nor toward him in attack, but across the table, as if to place himself between the shotgun and herself. The Texan’s hand is scrabbling under his coat for his pistol.

  Severts swings the gun as smoothly as a trapshooter and fires, catching Harky full in the throat and face with the second round of buckshot, before the giant has closed the distance to shield Hannah. Beside her, she hears Hans suck in his breath and shout, “Ah!” but he remains frozen in his chair.

  Harky rolls and drops, instantly blinded by the flow of blood from the wounds to his face, clutching at his torn throat. There is a hollow thonk as Michael thumbs open the breech of the shotgun, and Harky hears the spent shells clatter to the floor. As a roaring darkness closes in around him, Harky mutters, “At last …”

  Severts fumbles with cold-numbed fingers at the pocket of his coat. Hannah stares in horror as his hand emerges with another shell. Hans sits owl-eyed and paralyzed, gripping the edge of the table with both hands, as if trying to prevent himself from being blown away on the sudden storm of violence. Michael thumbs the shell into the breech, gropes again at his pocket, and mutters, “Damn it,” as more ammunition eludes his lifeless fingers.

  Hannah stumbles to her feet, screams, and flings her bowl of hot soup at Michael with a weak underhand motion that tumbles the hot liquid in a wide, spraying arc across the gun and his chest. At the sting of the broth, he jerks back, looking up sharply from his effort to reload the gun, mouth and eyes wide as if insulted. Hannah’s scream breaks through Hans’s shocked immobility, and he, too, leaps to his feet and hurls himself at Severts, tackling the Irishman to the ground, knocking the shotgun from his grip.

  Bear-hugging the smaller Irishman to his chest, he struggles to his feet, intending to slam his opponent into the wall, but Michael rears back his head and screaming a dark, wailing war cry of some Celtic ancestor berserk on the blood of Picts, slams his forehead hard against the bridge of Hans’s nose, then lunges, biting at his cheek.

  Hans shrieks, drops Severts and recoils, clawing and slapping. Severts lands on his feet, drops into a crouch, and hammers a tattoo of hooks and jabs into Hans’s ribs and belly. Hans, no boxer, backpedals, flailing wildly. Severts throws a flurry of hard-fisted blows. Hans recoils from the painful assault. An uppercut catches him on the point of the jaw, staggering him into a backward fall across the table, which splinters, collapsing under his weight. Blood from his crushed nose and bite-torn face streams hot and red into his eyes; his breath rasps as he sucks air into hammered ribs and lungs.

  Severts turns, grapples the shotgun from the floor, and steps back. Warmed by the battle, his fingers quickly find the last round of ammunition in his pocket, and he snaps open the breech, intent on rearming. Stunned and fighting for consciousness, Hans raises both hands to his face and tries to yell, but his voice gurgles out as a burbling moan.

  In the moment Michael looks down to insert the shell, Hannah catches up the cast-iron kettle by the bail and swings, a full, desperate, long-armed lunge that spins the weight of her slender body behind the mass of the cauldron, striking Michael squarely above the ear. The gun drops from his hands. Hannah stumbles, recovers her balance, and drops the stew pot as Michael teeters. Wobbling at the knees, he clutches his head, then fixes a dazed eye on her—“Hannah, no!”—and collapses to the ground.

  The sudden end of violence and motion leaves a vacuum in which Hannah hears a keening sound she recognizes as her own voice, crying, “Michael, what have you done?” The smell of gunpowder and blood, and spilled broth fills the cabin. Under it all is an odor more foul: the stench of murder, and bowels that failed at the moment of death.

  Hannah chokes, sobs, and leans over to peer at Michael’s face. Unconscious, it is not the face of a killer, but an angel, with dark lashes dewed with melted frost and a blush on his cheeks.

  Hans groans, climbing to his feet, then leans back against the wall and bends at the waist, putting his head in his hands to fight off a wave of nausea. When the room stops spinning, he stares a moment at the great lump that was Harky, then straightens, wide-eyed, and takes a step toward Dutch, who lies crumpled at an impossible angle into the juncture of wall and floor. In the dim light, the bodies lie loose-jointed and flattened, marionettes cut loose from their strings.

  “Jesus,” croaks Hans. “He’s killed everybody.”

  Hans shuffles to his wife, who stands crying over the Irishman, repeating a rolling incantation—“Why, Michael? Why?”—and looks down at him. Severts lies on his back, his lips slightly parted and moving soundlessly. The orbs of his eyes flutter in erratic circles beneath their lids.

  Hans is still a moment, glaring at Hannah. His look grows narrow and dangerous. The swelling of his broken nose is beginning to spread and darken into the area under his eyes.

  “Hans, are you all right?” asks Hannah. Her husband ignores her for a moment, staring down at the man at his feet. When he looks up, his hair and eyes are wild, and the lower half of his face is streaked with blood. It is a face, brutish with anger, twisted by some hissing, animal part of the soul that frightens Hannah as much as the murder that has shattered the frozen night.

  Severts moans, lifts a hand weakly from the floor, then drops it again and tries to roll to his side. The motion catalyzes Hans, and he lashes out with a boot to Michael’s ribs. “Murderer! Bastard murderer!”

  Kicking and shouting, he strikes again and again at the prone man. Hannah screams at the sound of his boot thudding into Severts’s side.

  “Hans! Stop it! Stop it!” She grabs at his arm. Hans shoves her, and she stumbles backward, trips on the outstretched leg of Harky’s body, and falls to the floor. When she pushes herself to her knees, her hand slips in something warm and sticky. “Oh God, Hans, please, you’re killing him!”

  “Damn right I’m killing him!” shouts Hans. �
��Murdering bastard!” Swinging a fist hard, again and again into Michael’s face and head.

  “Stop! Stop, for the love of God, no more!”

  Hannah crawls crabwise across the floor, stumbling, her boots catching in her skirts, and grabs up the gun. Without thinking, she rises and swings the barrel down hard against Hans’s shoulder, and he howls and falls to his knees.

  Stepping back, Hannah raises the gun and points it into the astonished face of her husband. “Hans, no. Get back.”

  “What in hell?” Hans bellows, as he tries to rise, then clutches at his shoulder as a shock of pain knifes him back to one knee. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I can’t let you kill him. Get back.” She makes a thrusting motion with the gun barrel that pushes Hans a step back.

  The sudden violence and murder, the blood, and the sickening sounds of brutality spin Hannah’s mind into a whirl of horror. How has it come to this, that she, who has never raised a hand against another human, or even whipped a dog or used a quirt on a horse, stands now surrounded by the dead, her hands slick and stinking with the fluids of murder, holding a gun on her own husband in defense of her lover? Twice in a moment she has seen murder done, and twice in a moment she has struck with fury and metal against a man with whom she has shared her body. Something splits and cracks within her, as the final reality of how far she has come from all that had been her genteel life spikes itself sharp and deep into her heart. The sensation of a growing web of fractures spreads, breaking away like the fragile shell of an egg, until there is only one desire, one thought, one word remaining: